When There's No Room Left in Hell (8)

When there was no more room left in hell, the number of zombies came to a grand total of four. I swung my cleaver and caved in one skull. Kang Ahyeon slit two throats with her kitchen knife. The third charged at me; I twisted aside and let it pitch off the rooftop. The fourth caught the hand axe I’d thrown just to test my arm—it buried itself to the handle in the thing’s head.

I still couldn’t tell if there were different grades of zombie, but the ones up here were mostly middle-aged women or old men. They weren’t much of a threat. Slow reactions, low aggression. Once they were all down, nothing remained but corpses. My sister and I wandered among them, combing the rooftop.

“...What the hell could’ve done something like this?”

There was no point swallowing the words that had slipped out. The scene deserved them. One body was plastered to the concrete like old chewing gum.

“Fuck, that’s ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠disgusting.”

It didn’t look like a zombie. The skin was too intact, pressed flat and vivid against the floor. I borrowed Ahyeon’s kitchen knife—the one she’d thrown a fit about when I took it—and scraped gently. The mess refused to peel away.

“Ugh, I’m gonna throw up.”

“Hngg, but that’s my knife…”

“Wipe it off and use it.”

The floor itself was slightly gouged out. I could only imagine what kind of monstrous strength had done this. It had to be something insanely powerful. The kind of force that made you wonder if it was even possible—until you remembered the parking lot.

Just days ago, that variant had shoved its head into the eighth floor and devoured the choir members. If something like that existed, a zombie with raw, overwhelming strength wasn’t out of the question.

Either way, the rooftop was no place to linger. In truth, nowhere in this building felt safe anymore. If the thing that had done this could rip doors off their hinges, what good was hiding in room 807?

And the display of power wasn’t limited to a single corpse. The deaths looked deliberately, sickeningly theatrical. A human crushed while still standing. Another smashed clean in half by a single blow. One whose head ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had simply vanished, the body collapsed on the floor. Even with my strength stat at 5, I couldn’t do anything like that. I couldn’t even picture how strong this variant had to be. Was it still humanoid? Had it even been human before it turned?

The gruesome sight sent a chill crawling down my spine, but I told myself the creature wouldn’t return. It had already finished its hunt. Why climb back up? Even if it did, the rooftop had still been worth the risk.

“Oppa, look at this…?”

Kang Ahyeon pointed toward the largest tent. Inside, carefully stored, was a hefty shotgun. I’d only ever seen them in games. I had no idea how to use it, but when I picked it up, the weight felt reassuring.

It was an unexpected find, but it made sense. Sion Mountain Fortress had been built as an apartment complex to survive the apocalypse that would arrive right before the Rapture. The shotgun must have been prepared for that very day. Or maybe someone had brought it with them. Either way, in a zombie apocalypse, it was one of the must-have items.

“Any shells?”

“Umm… doesn’t look like it?”

Disappointing. A gun without bullets was little more than a club that might break if you swung it too hard. Still, not entirely useless. Beyond its value as a blunt weapon, if the opponent had any intelligence at all, nothing beat it for intimidation. Hard to act tough with a barrel in your face. Even in South Korea, where guns were rare and the effect was halved, a well-timed threat could still work.

The only real problem was—

“Anyway, even if there were shells, I wouldn’t know how to use it, so it doesn’t matter.”

I had strength, not skill with firearms. I wasn’t confident I could hit anything. Of course, if I split open the skull of a veteran hunter zombie, I could plunder its shooting skill and use it… but actively hunting one down for that purpose was insane.

But then—

“Ah, I know how to use it!”

Kang Ahyeon shot her hand into the air.

“...You?”

“Yeah! I learned from the hunter uncle… Hehe.”

Logically, it wasn’t impossible. Ahyeon is pretty. Pretty girls tend to make men eager to teach them things, shoulders squared with pride. Whether those men had ulterior motives or not. But learning it here? There had been someone who knew how to shoot? It smelled like a lie. Maybe she’d acquired the skill through some ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other method. Like my Greed, which let me steal abilities by killing zombies—perhaps she had her own way of obtaining them.

It made sense when I thought about it that way, but I didn’t press her. If my little sister didn’t want to tell me, asking would be bad for my health. No matter how much of a bitch she was, she was the one who’d stabbed our parents to death. There was always the chance she might do the same to me someday. I didn’t completely distrust her, but there were plenty of reasons to be cautious.

Still, it wasn’t a bad haul.

“Two cold medicines, one painkiller… What’s this?”

“That’s a bandage.”

“A bandage? This? It looks like tape.”

“Yeah, I use it all the time!”

“Well… I have no idea how. You keep it.”

“Got it. Put it in the bag for me~”

I dropped the medical bandage into her pack, wedged the shotgun between my back and the bag, and split the food that would last the two of us about a week between our packs. If I hadn’t emptied the backpack beforehand, we couldn’t have carried it all. Luckily we had.

“Ready to head back?”

“Yeah! We still have to organize, clean, and do all sorts of things…”

Her words cut off mid-sentence. I followed her blank stare. The stairs leading up to the rooftop. The central staircase, the one with the elevator. Something was pushing open the iron door and stepping onto the roof.

It was over two meters tall. Even standing right in front of me, I would’ve had to crane my neck to look up at it. A giant humanoid that had to stoop just to fit through the doorway.

But it wasn’t human.

Its skin was ashen gray. Thick muscles glistened with blood. It wore nothing. Completely naked. Yet two things stood out far more than its nudity.

The cross on its back—rebar bent and welded to a slab of concrete, forming a crude crucifix. And from that same back, long string-like tendrils dangled like some kind of unholy halo.

The things staggering up behind it were sickeningly familiar. Zombies with split and shattered skulls. Corpses that should have stayed dead after I killed them. They shambled forward, following the giant variant.

Seeing them, I remembered a phrase I’d once heard.

When there was no more room in hell, the dead would walk the earth.

The quest window made my hair stand on end. Two stat points and the Synthesis skill. A conditional quest I’d never seen before. This was clearly harder than killing fourteen people. I spun around and grabbed Ahyeon’s wrist.

“Fuck…!”

BOOM!

I broke into a sprint. The moment I lunged forward, a deafening crash exploded right behind us. No time to process it.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

“Ahyeon! Run ahead!”

She obeyed without a word, knife already drawn but with no chance to use it. We burst through the iron door into the emergency stairwell. A thunderous pounding chased us down.

BOOM!

We reached the fifteenth floor. Above us, the iron door crumpled like paper.

“Crazy bastard…!”

The corpses on the rooftop finally made sense. That thing had done it. If it could resurrect zombies, you’d think it would at least be physically weak. Instead it carried a concrete cross on its back and crushed people like cardboard. Sure, its size helped, but this was just unfair.

There was no time to complain. I locked eyes with my sister and we raced down the stairs. Normally she would’ve been gasping for breath within seconds, but she kept up surprisingly well. Had she invested points into agility or strength? That was a relief.

Even though there was no time to complain, the question still burned in my head: why the hell had that variant come back to the rooftop? I didn’t understand, but one thing was certain—if it caught us, we were dead.

“O-oppa, where are we—?!”

Yeah. Fuck. Where were we going?

No time to think. It was pounding down after us. Those strings on its back—I had no idea how far they could stretch, but if I were it, I’d be using the central staircase too. We were being surrounded. It was trying to keep us from escaping into the hallways. I didn’t know how intelligent it was, but I assumed the worst. We were probably screwed.

I ground my teeth. “We’re faster. If we run down fast enough and slip inside, we’ll be fine. That thing doesn’t know where we came from.”

It couldn’t. The tendril we’d seen on the seventh-floor veranda was probably one of its minions or an extension of its body. It must have sensed people were here and followed the trail, which was why it had hunted down the choir members. Running into us on the rooftop had been pure coincidence. Its cognitive ability clearly wasn’t that sharp. The fact that we were still alive despite its overwhelming power and broken ability was the only proof I needed.

I pushed Ahyeon ahead, leaping down several steps at a time. A crashing, crumbling sound echoed from above. I prayed the concrete emergency stairwell wouldn’t collapse on our heads. Before I knew it we’d reached the eighth floor.

“Get inside! Go home!”

“Huh? What about you?!”

“I’ll draw its attention from the seventh floor and lead it up! If we both go in now, it’ll just rip our door off!”

“B-but…!”

“Shut up and listen to your brother!”

That familiar expression. She’d worn the same face when I shoved the bed onto my legs and screamed. The same face when she decided to kill our parents after they stole the money she’d saved to become independent. The same face when I beat the parents who had thrown away our food. The same face when I dragged my starving body into the room.

A face on the verge of tears. Lips bitten tight, swallowing sobs. But she didn’t cry. My sister was an idiot, but she wasn’t that stupid.

“Get lost. You’d only get in the way. Go clean the house or something.”

I knew the harsh words I spat were a lie. She was smarter than me, after all. She forced a clumsy smile, opened the emergency door, and disappeared. I quickly shut the eighth-floor door, shoved the furniture back into place, and ran.

Rumble.

It was close. The Preacher was maybe one or two floors above. I waited a little longer, gauging the sound, then burst out. Being alone actually calmed me down. If I died here, at least I’d die alone. That was better. If she died because of me, it would mean I couldn’t even do the one decent thing I thought I’d managed as an older brother.

I hadn’t done much right in my life. I wanted to at least get that one thing right. So I had to keep doing it from now on, too.

I clenched my teeth and ran. I didn’t take the stairs—I jumped them entirely. The moment I landed on the seventh floor and opened the door—

“...Ah, fuck.”

My plan to reach room 707 failed. I only made it as far as 708. Zombies that had come down the central staircase blocked my path.

Crunch!

Behind me, the emergency stairwell door was ripped off its hinges. I caught a glimpse of gray skin and a massively developed pectoral muscle.

“Pretty smart for a fucking zombie.”

Just how high was the difficulty on this thing? A dry laugh escaped me. I drew my cleaver, still chuckling.

I’d do whatever I could. That was all there was to it.

As I settled into a stance, my eyes fell on the apartment door. It had a doorbell. Those things were surprisingly loud. The stairwell was already shaking from the monster smashing its way down, but the noise might still help. The choir members and the people in 808 had all been too afraid to step into the hallway—unlike these zombies.

Yet the one that should have shown up by now was nowhere to be seen. That gave me an idea. Maybe it couldn’t pinpoint our exact location. A doorbell was artificial enough. For something that could tell humans from zombies, it might work. And if I added a human voice?

To a certain gigantic, greedy variant, maybe it would sound like its mother calling it to dinner.

I didn’t hesitate. I slammed my hand against the doorbell. It rang loudly. Not enough. I shouted at the top of my lungs.

“Hey, you fucking snake bastard! Dinner time—!”

The doorbell screamed. My strengthened lungs made my shout even louder. The sudden action froze even the zombies. They stared at me blankly. Primitive intelligence struggled with sudden, nonsensical behavior. Fortunately, these things didn’t have the brains to understand language or draw conclusions.

Yeah, that’s right. How smart could you possibly be? You think you have human survival instincts?

I curled my lips into a grin. Gritting my teeth so my legs wouldn’t shake, I grabbed the doorknob of room 708.

There was always a crawling variant beneath a running one, and a desperate human above them both. This monster preferred humans, but it didn’t strictly discriminate between zombies and people.

I turned toward the enormous shadow slowly stretching across the hallway. A monster that could only be described as a snake waited there. A massive head that looked like it had been made by clumping bloody flesh together. Countless eyes sprouting across its surface.

“Run it the fuck over, you pieces of shit.”

The moment the snake’s maw opened, I threw myself forward.

KWAAAAAAAANG!

The snake’s tongue shot out, smashing through the corridor and the zombies in its path.